Dear Mike，

      I'm so glad you're coming to China! Your mother，our foreign English teacher，told me you're worried about what you should and shouldn't do as a guest in China．Here's some advice．You will probably be invited to a big meal. You may find it earlier than you expect because Chinese people eat dinner much earlier than people in the West．There will be a lot of different dishes，not just three courses．You may find it difficult to use chopsticks if you haven't tried before．It's a good idea to get some practice．When the food is served，you should take time to look at it. The preparation takes a long time and everything will look beautiful．The plates will be placed in the middle of the table，for everyone to share．Take a little of everything and then have some more of the things you like．Chinese people like to talk about food，so it's a good topic of conversation．At the end of the meal，you will usually be served with fruit．Eat your fruit，thank your friends， and go．

      I hope this is helpful．E-mail me if you have any other questions． 

                                                                                                                              Yours，

                                                                                                                                   David Zhang

    Different countries have different customs(风俗) in the world. It's very important for us to know about them.

    When you go to the US, someone often says to you "give me five". What should you do? Do not get five dollars from your pocket! It will make others laugh! The person is not asking for your money, but your fingers.

    In the US, "give me five" or "give me the high five" is a popular gesture. You can see it often in films or on TV. It means hitting(敲打) each other's right hands together.

    People do it when they meet for the first time or something happy happens. For example, a student good grades in exams. If a football teams wins a game, the players will give high fives to everyone around to celebrate.

    This gesture may come from the old Roman gesture of raising the right arm for the empor. This showed the person raising his arm did not have a knife in his hand.

    Why not try to give the high five to your friends?

    The Chinese New Year is called the Spring Festival, which is the biggest festival in China.

It usually comes in January or February. Where there are Chinese, there is the Spring Festival. Each Chinese year has a name. We may call it the Year of the Tiger, the Year of the Pig or the Year of the Snake. And the year of 2015 is called the Year of the Goat. The year after it is the Monkey Year.

    People always spend a month before the festival in preparing for it. They are busy shopping and cleaning their houses. On the eve there is a big family dinner. All the family stay up late to welcome the New Year, watching the CCTV programs or playing cards. On the first day of the Chinese New Year, people put on their new clothes and go to visit their relatives(亲戚) and friends, saying "Happy New Year", "Good luck" and some other greetings to each other. It often lasts to the Lantern Festival, which is also an important Chinese festival and people usually have sweet dumplings (yuanxiao).People always have a very good time, especially children. Children can usually get some money for the new year from their parents and the elder relatives.

    Every country has its favorite food. Italians like to eat pizza. Indians like to eat hot food. Japanese like to eat fish. Often they don't cook it.

    In England, one of the most popular kinds of food is fish and chips. People usually buy it in a fish and chip shop. They put it in paper bags, and take it home, or to their workplace. Sometimes they eat it in the park or on the road. The world's favorite food is American fast food. If you go to some important cities in the world, you can find people eating hamburgers and chips.

    Fish and chips, and Chinese take-away food are very popular in England. But they are less popular in the USA, they eat take-away food, too, like chicken. But the most popular kind of take-away food is the hamburger. It looks like bread with meat in it. Ham (火 腿) is a kind of pork, but the hamburger does not have any pork in  it. The beef is inside a kind of cake hamburgers are delicious. They are also popular in England and Australia.